Falling Down
by Silver Pard
Summary: When John is 17, he wishes goblins would come take his annoying little sister away.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Still on the sherlockbbc_fic meme... admitting to authorship whenever the Magic 8-ball says 'yes, definitely'... May have to change my mind about that method.

Prompt: When John is 17, he wishes goblins would come take his annoying little sister away.

When John is 37, he wishes the Goblin King would come take him away.

(Yes, Sherlock is Jareth.)

...You'd think a prompt that basically boiled down to 'Sherlock is the Goblin King' would be filled with hilarity and crack. But no, apparently not.**

* * *

**

**.0.**

_"God, sometimes I just wish the goblins would come and take you away!"_

"Well," says a bored voice. "Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'be careful what you wish for'?"

**.1.**

At seventeen, John shows no sign of the man he will be. He is just a boy, frustrated with being the glue that holds his family together, the thin thread (strong as silk) that tries to bind what fell apart long ago.

His mother tells him stories between her sobs, nails an iron horseshoe above the door, leaves milk out for the brownies and used to circle his crib with salt to keep away their nastier cousins - though why she feeds one type of goblin and fears the other, John doesn't know.

"Take care of Harriet," she says, and John does. Even though he resents it and her (he's only three years older and it _shouldn't be his job_), he takes care of Harry, because if he doesn't nobody else will.

But sometimes, oh, _sometimes_-

**.12.**

Maybe he shouldn't be surprised the image of the Goblin King shifts in his head; trickery and illusion are, after all, the Fair Folk's speciality.

John is pretty sure that the first time he saw him, when he came to take Harry, he was tall with neat black hair, thin to the point of emaciation, grey-eyed and hook-nosed, dressed in what was probably the height of fashion, back in the Victorian era.

Then he thinks, no, that's not right, has a very clear image of dark curls and superior smirk, expensive modern suit and flaring coat.

The hands are always the same, though, slender and long-fingered, the hands of a violinist. John is always going to remember how something had twisted low in his belly at the sight of them waving away his words like smoke from a fire. It's just another of those things he is never going to talk about.

(He's not sure which iteration the riding crop belongs to.

He's a little afraid to guess.)

**.3.**

"I can't take what isn't freely offered," the Goblin King says mildly. "So it's really quite a good thing that you're the head of the family."

"I'm seventeen," John hears himself say (anger so bitter-old it tastes like resignation).

"So?" The King says. He leans close and whispers family secrets in John's ear, plucks them from the air or the despair in John's eyes, it doesn't matter. "Your father is a pathetic man," he says, "a drunk and a fool, a dead weight upon your family, save when he wakes and is something worse, thinks he can solve every problem he makes with his fists."

Gloved hands flex and tap the air an inch away from John's cheek; fingers spread to cover a bruise long gone.

"Your mother is weak as moonshine, a pale reflection of all she used to be before she married your father, absent in spirit if not in presence. In her head, she leaves you, flees to the highlands she was born in. So it falls to you to be the head of the household, the one with the power and when _you_ wished, I listened."

"You didn't _have to_-" John starts to say, and the Goblin King laughs, like John has suddenly managed to get the joke.

"_Exactly_," he says, and the next instant John stands alone in the dark.

**.10.**

"God, John," Harry snaps. "Stop being an overprotective arsehole and let me live my own life!"

"I'm not being overprotective," John snaps back.

"Oh please! You act like any minute somebody could just come along and snatch me away!"

But they _could,_ he wants to say.

(_You _asked _that the child be taken-_)

**.2.**

"Mum says the Fair Folk like games," John says.

"Why bother?" sighs the Goblin King. "You're not intelligent enough to best me."

"I don't need to be intelligent, I need to be smart."

The Goblin King turns, looks at him properly for the first time, studying him as if to take him apart.

"I challenge you," John says, and his voice hardly shakes at all.

The Goblin King grins, bright and sudden, and it's like everything John's been waiting for, all he's ever sought - it was hidden there, just waiting.

"Very well," he says, in a deep, satisfied voice, and John shivers and tells himself it's fear. "You have thirteen hours to solve the labyrinth."

**.5.**

"I must confess, I didn't expect you to get even this far."

John doesn't start. Much. "Do you normally follow mortals through your labyrinth?"

"I'm bored," says the King. "You're marginally more interesting than the goblins."

"Thanks for that," John says. "What's so interesting about me?"

"Your strength," the King says. "Your stubbornness. Your refusal to accept that you lost the moment you began. Who knows?"

"Haven't you ever heard the saying?" John says.

"Hm?"

"Pride comes before a fall?"

"Never," says the King, sounds amused. "I'm always right, my dear Watson."

"Yeah? Well, I'm going to finish this bloody maze, get my sister back, and right before I go, I'm going to whisper my birthplace in your ear, and the next time you think you've got everything figured out, you're going to remember my voice and think again."

"Oh, I'd love to see you try."

**.7.**

_I was __**bored**__. But now I'm not. Perhaps I'll keep you._

**.4.**

John is friendly and personable and he knows the lore. His help is freely offered, but he expects help in exchange. It's only fair.

He pays attention to what is said, because he knows the Folk can't lie, but they can twist the truth so thoroughly it looks like one.

Steadily, he makes his path.

**8.**

_Sherlock._

To know a true name is to have power - the power to control, to destroy, to free yourself of a bargain unwisely made.

But a name freely given means more still, and so the Goblin King can say 'John Watson' and John does not catch his breath. There is a piece missing, and the King knows it by the way John can ignore him and keep walking.

His mother was always so careful about when she used his middle name to call him in from the dark.

(The King is the Land, and the Land is the King, all the labyrinth and all its creatures. One of them says a name in John's hearing, a name that touches John inside, like a perfect violin piece, played just for him.

The King is the Land - the name is freely given.)

**.6.**

The King tosses fruit at him when he hears his stomach growling, reels off a list of facts tracking back time to when John last ate.

"Brilliant," John says honestly, to the King's startled bemusement, but he doesn't eat, though he's sure it would be the best thing he'd ever taste in his life.

(For the rest of his life he will dream of peaches and gold-skinned apples, tying him to a realm beneath the earth.)

**.9.**

"_Norbury._"

**.11.**

"I'm so sorry, Johnny," his mother whimpers, the day before he's posted to Afghanistan. "So sorry."

He hasn't the heart to tell her he hasn't been Johnny to anyone but her since he was seventeen.

"For what?" John says, his smile easy and unconcerned, his eyes deep and still. The rock in the storm, is John Watson, and nobody ever sees how restless he is beneath his calm, always changing, seeking a grander adventure.

"I've failed. I didn't protect you. Something has marked you - it's in your eyes," she whispers.

(_Look at what I'm offering you! You want to __**stay **__in that boring world? Alone, unappreciated, torn down bit by bit every day until there's nothing left? All you've ever wanted, John, __**it's right here**__!_)

"I can't go to the crossroads for you, Johnny. There's no one to hold you fast."

("_They'll turn me in your arms, lady, into an esk and adder, but hold me fast, and fear me not_-"

"Stop filling his head with such _nonsense_, Moira!"

There was a scream, and yelling, and the sound of flesh meeting flesh, and John closed his eyes and went away, telling himself that one day he would meet someone who would be willing to hold on to _him_ no matter what he changed into-

He would say, "Let me go, or hold fast," so that if they wanted - if they weren't -

It had to be a choice.

They would laugh as if he'd said nothing, as if it wasn't even a question, and hold him tight.)

"It's alright," he tells his mother, tucks her greying hair back behind her ear and knows she doesn't believe him. "Some of us like to change."

**.13.**

No matter how far he runs, how much he changes he cannot escape -

_Say your right words_, hisses a voice in his memory.

He's pretty sure he doesn't want to.

(His mother called him uncanny; his fellow soldiers call him lucky. A little bit mad, of course, but you never met a luckier bastard than John Watson.

His mother would have called it the luck of the Fair Folk if she'd heard, and begged him never to look at the things that could be seen out of the corner of his eye, because Sight is not a gift they ever intend to give, they will always want to take it back, if they have to pluck out his eyes to do so.)

He can feel something pressing on him. Memory, or fate, or something equally heavy.

He thinks he's going to die.

He's okay with that, he decides. His sister no longer needs his protection, their parents are dead and returned to the earth. He's okay with it because he's never found what he's been seeking, doesn't even know what it is, really.

_Sherlock_

When he's shot, it's almost a relief.

_Say your right words,_ insists that so familiar voice. John flails, paws at the dirt, his uninjured arm turning an unusually distinct blood spatter in the shape of an owl into just another smear of red.

"I wish," he breathes, just before the world goes dark.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Relax, there is no more to this fic. I think.

...On the other hand, it is my birthday soon, and I do like to try and post something on my birthday... hm. Ah well, I've got a list of prompts to go through, surely one of them will work out.

* * *

"Sometimes," his sister slurs, "sometimes I dream, you know,"

"Everybody dreams, Harry," John says dryly.

"No, you prick. Lemme _finish_. I dream about, about Mum's fairies you know, her - her, wha's the word, like a goblin but Scottish?"

"Bodach," John says.

"Yeah. I dream about bodach." She giggles inanely. John looks at her and hates their father, hates the example he has set, hates that Harry isn't strong enough to keep herself from walking the same path - hates himself a little too. He can't decide which idea he hates more - that he was too weak to protect her, or that he was too strong and shielded her so thoroughly she doesn't _understand_.

He doesn't doubt that it is his fault.

(_It falls to you to be the head of the household_)

"Goblins, an' - an' a _king_, John."

Something in John twists, tightens and clenches, an uncomfortable knot of emotions low in his gut.

_no_, _**no**_, _he's mine, mine, I don't want to share this with you, Harry, not him too, haven't I given you enough?_

("Look after Harriet, Johnny_._"

When did that become 'give everything, leave nothing for yourself'?)

"He was _amazin'_, John. Arrogant bastard, but amazin'. Wasn't very interested in me, though. Which is good, 'cause, you know, _gay_. So I'd hafta kick 'im in the goolies, an' that would be a waste of cheekbones, cause it didn't look like he'd passed those genes on yet-"

"Harry," John says, hates how much _he_ hates to hear her referring to one of the most definitive times in his life, and the person that made it so.

"Watched you in a li'l glass ball," Harry says sleepily. "Thought you were trapped there, cause he smiled all smuglike about it, but you weren't."

John says nothing.

"I dreamed you didn't want me," his sister says. "But you do, don't you?" she says plaintively. "You're the only one who's ever wanted me, John. Mum was always away with the fairies and Dad was-" she makes a face. "God, look at us. So maudlin."

"You've had enough to drink then," John says, forces her to stand up. She leans on him as they walk away from the pub - he thinks, some resentful seventeen-year-old part of him, _story of my life_.

"You're away with the fairies, too," she whispers, alcohol-laden breath against his ear. "Don't go, Johnny, don't leave me."

"Okay," John says. "Okay."

"'m lying," she says later, when he tips her carefully onto her bed, lies there staring at the ceiling like something is written there. "I 'member 'nuff of Mum's stories. I know you can't dance with the fairies an' come back the same, be happy."

Oh, John realises, something leaden and sad in his chest. So it really is his fault. She drinks to forget.

She glares like she can read his mind. "Don' - don' even think it, Johnny boy. God, you're such a _martyr_. Not everythin' is your fault, you know."

"Whatever you say," John says, paints a mild, cheerful expression on his face. She scoffs at him.

"If it makes you happy," she says softly, as he walks around the room, puts a glass of water and mum's godawful but effective hangover cure by her bedside so they'll be the first thing she sees in the morning, "John, Johnny, big brother - if it'll make you happy, _go dance_."

* * *

John wakes up, and wishes he hadn't. Everything _aches_, down to his bones, just as it did the day after he ran the Labyrinth. (He woke feeling as if something had been torn from him and knew it to be true; shouldn't its return be the opposite?)

"Welcome home," a voice says, carefully flat and devoid of expression.

John can taste peaches.

"What have you _done_?" he says softly. He isn't sure if it is fear or outrage that steals his voice. Perhaps it is something else entirely, as it often is where the Goblin King and his demesne are concerned.

"What was necessary." The Goblin King keeps his back turned, watches the orange sky, and no matter what he tries, John cannot get another word out of him.

Eventually, he drifts back into fevered sleep.

* * *

He is sure it is a dream when he hears the words _you wished_, said with something indefinable, something fervent, hope that had rested in a crucible too long, been transformed into something else.

He is sure it is a dream. It has to be, or that tone, that voice, those two words - they would not have broken his heart.

* * *

"Stop that," the Goblin King says irritably, watching John pace, careful and awkward.

"Stop what?" John says.

"_Limping_," the King snaps. "Stop it."

"I can't help it," John says tightly, .

The King seems to _unfold_ more than stand, looms over John with teeth bared. "You can," he says, his eyes fierce and dark, the way John imagines they'd look if he found he'd been wronged in some way (odd then, he notes, that he has never seen it before. You'd think besting a king of his kind would count as a wrong). "You were shot in the shoulder, not the leg. You think I couldn't heal you, even so? Stop limping, stop acting like something in you has broken!"

"But I am broken," John says before he can stop himself.

(_I can't go to the crossroads for you, Johnny_

Why do you assume I need someone to free me? Why is your first thought that there is something wrong with me, something that needs to be fixed?)

The King storms past him, Victorian frock coat snapping against the air, hawklike face still as stone.

John watches him go, wonders what his problem is, and tells himself it doesn't hurt to see so many dreams come true.

* * *

"I told you, didn't I?" The King hisses against his ear. "I told you that world would break you down."

"You told me everything I wanted was here," John corrects. He is not surprised to find himself standing on a distant hill, all the Labyrinth stretched out before him.

"Isn't it? You wanted, no," he corrects himself, "you _needed_ adventure, needed strength, didn't I give that to you? Haven't you always sought your way back? Back to your genesis? Everything you ever wanted, it _is_ right here. So why did you leave?"

"It was a lie."

"You know the lore. I cannot lie."

It's a dream. It doesn't matter if he is honest.

(_I've brought you a gift._)

_Remember, Johnny, illusion and trickery are the gifts of the Fair Folk. Never believe what they offer. A dream from their hand will turn like a snake and bite you._

"If everything I want is here, then where are you?"

(Welcome _home_, not back. There is something important about that.

_You know the lore._

Yes. Words are important. Word choice is always significant. 'Welcome home', he said, not 'welcome back'-)

"Where I always am. Waiting for you."

"Waiting for me _what_? To do something, be something, understand something-?"

The Goblin King studies the distant castle and says nothing. John hears: _if you can't work it out, you're less than the man I thought you to be._

It makes him angry. It touches the iron core he hadn't realised was in him until he ran the Labyrinth, it makes him determined to beat this - whatever this is - too.

Clever, he realises after a moment, looking at the Goblin King's smile. That's the idea.

(_Think, John._)

* * *

"You have no power over me, and if I ever gave it to you, I take it back," John snarls. "I'm not afraid of you."

"Good," the Goblin King says.

(_ask your right __**questions**_)

John pauses, stymied. "Good?"

"Yes," the King says, doesn't explain. He looks at John with patient indulgence, waiting for him to understand.

_**Think**. Words are important. Word choice is important. That applies to_ your _word choices as well - his reaction to your word __choices. _

_Go through it, bit by bit, assumption by assumption. One: he has no power over you. Two: you can give him power. Three: that power is fear._ There. _Fear is not the only thing that gives someone power._

"Oh." John says. The Goblin King's smile widens. "Right. Well you _still_ have no power over me, anyway."

"Liar," the King says - John wonders if it is affection rather than mockery that lightens his tone.

"Goblin King-"

"Sherlock."

"What?"

"Sherlock. I know you know my name. Use it. That is, after all, the reason I gave it to you."

(Equality. _Stupid_, John - it is a matter of exchange. Someone has power over you only if you allow it. He allows it, gave his name freely -

_Acknowledge a gift, but never thank them, because they might decide it puts you in their debt. Give your help freely and you will get help when you need it. If you are offered something, accept it, and expect to be asked for something in return._)

_Always be fair in exchange._

John takes a deep breath, looks at the Goblin King - at _Sherlock._ His kind can bend the truth till it breaks, but there are rules, and they are bound by them.

John has always considered himself a fair man.

"John Hamish Watson," he says, clear and steady, not a single trace of doubt in his tone.

"John Hamish Watson," Sherlock repeats softly. "_John_."

(_Welcome **home**_)

_If it'll make you happy - go dance_

He was wrong, John decides, about what he thought when he woke up. It was not an end to his life, just a beginning of a different stage.

His leg aches as he follows Sherlock, but he doesn't limp.


End file.
